FAYETTEVILLE — Several dozen residents got a firsthand look Wednesday at four potential sites for a downtown parking deck.
David Jurgens, Fayetteville utilities director and project manager for the parking deck, led two public walking tours of the sites around the Walton Arts Center.
City Council members are expected to select a final site for the parking deck in June or July using input from residents and Garver LLC, the engineering firm hired to conduct preliminary site designs for the deck.
“This is a 50- to 70-year facility,” Jurgens told residents prior to Wednesday’s tour. “We want it to last that long, so we need to plan for that.
“We don’t want to have a monolithic six-story or five-story concrete wall in everybody’s face. We want it to match the ambiance (of Dickson Street).”
The four sites city officials are considering for a roughly 300-space parking deck are:
• A portion of the about 280-space main lot west of the arts center
• An existing, 58-space parking lot south of Kingfish bar on School Avenue
• An existing, about 60-space parking lot across West Avenue from Nadine Baum Studios
• A location on the south end of the Walton Arts Center’s existing campus where the center’s administrative offices, loading docks, Grub’s Bar & Grille and an adjoining storage building are located.
Jurgens said the site on the arts center’s current campus would be the least disruptive for existing parking and would have potential access to three streets: West Avenue, Spring Street and School Avenue. He and Terri Trotter, the arts center’s chief operating officer, said that option would be the most complicated to coordinate with renovations to the arts center’s existing building, however.
Building on the main parking lot west of the arts center would mean removing existing parking spaces during construction and finding other options for events like Bikes, Blues & BBQ. However, construction equipment could be staged on-site, and underground utilities are already in place, Jurgens said.
Limited space at the two smaller parking lots would require building tall structures next to existing residences and storing some construction equipment off-site, Jurgens said.
Whichever site is chosen, the deck is set to be paid for using up to $6.5 million in bonds. The bonds will be repaid using revenue from the city’s paid parking system, which generated nearly $1 million in its first year, according to Fayetteville’s Parking Management Division.
AT A GLANCE
Comments
Residents were encouraged to send any comments about four potential sites for a downtown parking deck by Monday to [email protected].
Source: Staff Report
Jurgens said bonds would be issued about the same time a site is selected this summer.
Construction is expected to begin next spring and take about one year to complete.
Julie Dorrough and two other members of the Dickson Street Neighborhood Association who took part in one of the walking tours Wednesday said she preferred building on the arts center’s main parking lot.
Dorrough said a wide-open, flat space would give the city added flexibility in site design and would encourage a pedestrian-friendly deck where commercial businesses could be located on the first floor.
“Even if we just used one-third of the lot, we’d get a lot more,” Dorrough said.
Brian Swain, the administrator at Central United Methodist Church who also served on Mayor Lioneld Jordan’s ad hoc parking deck committee, encouraged Jurgens and other city officials to find a way to build the parking deck in conjunction with Walton Arts Center renovations.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just do construction one time?” Swain asked.
Jurgens said the city was working closely with arts center leadership. He added city money could not be pooled with Walton Arts Center money for a joint construction project.
Trotter said it might be a year before designs and money are in place for arts center renovations.
“The biggest challenge for us is timing,” she said.